{"id":1499,"date":"2016-01-12T18:21:10","date_gmt":"2016-01-12T18:21:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/paullferguson.dev\/?p=1499"},"modified":"2016-03-08T14:15:03","modified_gmt":"2016-03-08T14:15:03","slug":"setting-off-on-a-bicycle-a-letter-of-thanks-to-tom-allen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/paullferguson.com\/setting-off-on-a-bicycle-a-letter-of-thanks-to-tom-allen\/","title":{"rendered":"Setting off on a bicycle: A letter of thanks to Tom Allen"},"content":{"rendered":"

Written mid Atlantic on route to Rio to see minha namorada and give Brazil a pedal.<\/em><\/p>\n

I’ve always enjoyed riding bikes in many different forms, some of my earliest memories are of\u00a0exploring and crashing on them so it only seemed fitting that as a serious itch\u00a0to see the world started to take hold my trusty steed\u00a0would be there with me.<\/p>\n

As the BMX started to gather dust I started to roam further and further on my heap of a pub bike, panniers were soon added for the first overnighter and the creek of single speed gears soon spread to my knees. As the trips\u00a0extended; the next town, the next county, half a country a whole country it was soon time to get a proper work horse for the road. Things were getting serious, the next step would go\u00a0beyond what any work leave I could hope for, this would require a big change, this was quitting territory.<\/p>\n

Setting of on a bike into the unknown longterm is daunting. Really really daunting. I\u00a0plague myself with what if’s, <\/em>nightmares of no food, technical failures, will a 600 whatever sleeping bag be enough or will I freeze to death, alone, in padded shorts, bones\u00a0picked clean by savage\u00a0Albanian hounds. Oh god, I might make a cup of tea and watch a Black Books DVD instead.<\/p>\n

Tomsbiketrip.com<\/a><\/strong> swooped in from the Googles and slowly the anxieties cleared, it was possible to survive this and actually I didn’t need the latest trends<\/a> cooked up by the outdoor and cycling industry to make it out the front door. The honest stores were inspiring and the practical guide very useful. He’s even got in-depth ebooks, one on Kit<\/a> and the other on Bikes<\/a>. Wild camping with a dash of common sense is in fact a piece of cake<\/a>\u00a0and the many faces you see along the way will be beaming joy and encouragement. It will be ok!<\/p>\n

I made the pledge on his\u00a0site<\/a>\u00a0and finally left Brighton UK in May 2015<\/a>, riding for the Great Silk Road. I had most of my preparation focused on the Caucuses and China, Europe consisted of two lines in my plan, friends in Paris and Florence, that was it, along with a few Euro Velo<\/a> maps. I gave myself about a month and a half to get to Istanbul, any longer and the Pamir\u00a0Highway<\/a> was going to get hellish cold.<\/p>\n

If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans<\/p>\n

Dave Rowse (via Woody Allan I think)<\/cite><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The best thing about travels by bike is how\u00a0naked you are to the world, in the finest way, each day is different with new faces and warming stories<\/a>, you soon embrace\u00a0the unknown.\u00a0I got to Slovenia and swore I would stay no more than ten days volunteering at a hostel, a month later<\/a> and I had to tear myself away from a new home and family of friends dashing down the Balkans<\/a> to share my trip with a special new someone I’d met in Slovenia. Eventually her European visa ran out and she had to return home, it all felt strangely empty without her, the journey pointless. I had trained for repairing spokes and researched flaky visas but I never thought\u00a0I would find love and it blind sided me.<\/p>\n

\"Anne<\/a><\/p>\n

So here we go. It took nearly four months to get to\u00a0south Turkey where I switched to a boat to take me west across the Atlantic instead of cycling east. The boat got me as far as the Canaries but it was.. socially complicated<\/a>, so now I’m on one of those boring\u00a0planes but excited more than ever.<\/p>\n

I\u00a0can’t shift the giddy feeling that I’m supposed to be doing something a little more\u00a0normal somewhere else, I’ve surprised myself, all for a bike and love, and thanks to that\u00a0pesky Tom Allen.<\/p>\n

So thank you Tom, you are\u00a0forever\u00a0a saint.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Paul<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Written mid Atlantic on route to Rio to see minha namorada and give Brazil a pedal. I’ve always enjoyed riding bikes in many different forms, some of my earliest memories are of\u00a0exploring and crashing on… Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1599,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/paullferguson.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/NF-Final-Set-01-040.jpeg?fit=4251%2C3178&ssl=1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/paullferguson.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1499"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/paullferguson.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/paullferguson.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paullferguson.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paullferguson.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1499"}],"version-history":[{"count":23,"href":"https:\/\/paullferguson.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1499\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1601,"href":"https:\/\/paullferguson.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1499\/revisions\/1601"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paullferguson.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1599"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/paullferguson.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1499"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paullferguson.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1499"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paullferguson.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1499"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}